


circles, not hearts

by sorrymom



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/F, more like teenage friends, omg i just realized i accidentally made this about geography, posting before the debate ruins my brain, the clemprint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26885782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorrymom/pseuds/sorrymom
Summary: Momo and Sana grow up in the countryside making maps that spirograph past the fences.
Relationships: Hirai Momo/Minatozaki Sana
Comments: 12
Kudos: 124





	circles, not hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strawberryblnd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberryblnd/gifts).



Sometimes Momo likes to think about what it looks like from above— the cracked asphalt road like a stray thread across the quilt of rice fields trapezoiding through the valley, the shadow flock of cranes slurring green grass in summer.

From that far up someone probably wouldn’t be able to see the two bicycles on that road, the two girls riding them. There’s a lot they wouldn’t know— that Momo’s thighs ache from hours of trying to keep up; that Sana’s knee is straining against a patchwork of band-aids; that their flip-phones are dead in their pockets but the only person they’d want to talk to is just a handlebar-tilt away. 

And there are other things. 

Other things that aren’t important right now as the breeze soothes a cool breath over the sweat on Momo’s skin and Sana starts a serpentine pattern that Momo mirrors and every few seconds they braid just perfectly enough so that above the July heat and below the golden light Momo is centered in the scent of Sana’s shampoo. 

-

Momo remembers the first thing she said to Sana because it was pretty stupid. 

The fact was that she had been paying attention to Sana for a while and was pretty sure Sana didn’t even know they were neighbors. 

It was hard not to notice Sana though. She was always late to school, coming in radiant and apologetic, her shirt hanging long on one side because she buttoned it wrong. People would roll their eyes and smile at the same time but everyone liked her. She raised her hand for every question, even when she didn’t know the answer. Momo was thankful— it meant the teacher’s eyes never scanned the back of the room, never settled on her. 

And then, in the evenings, when Momo’s eyes ached from staring down at nonsense equations she’d look through her window and see Sana laid out on the roof next-door, a bath towel spread beneath her to protect from the scratch of the shingles. Just staring at the sky as it darkened and the quaver of owls and wolves sang distantly. 

All the looking, all the noticing, started to make Momo feel awkward. Like she had formed an attachment to something on a TV screen or a character in a book, like she knew something secret about a stranger. 

So Momo catches her one day in the rain-flooded alley between their houses and stammers “pigs never look at the sky.” 

Sana is guiding her bicycle by the handlebars, white sneakers sloshing through the puddles. Her head cocks to the side. “Sorry?” 

“Because of.” Momo doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They’re half in her pockets, and she shoves one down, lifts the other hand up to point at the bright blue nothing above them. “Neck fat. Or, like, something with their bones. I heard it on TV, but. They can’t look directly up.” 

Sana’s eyebrows crease in something like distress. 

“I’m— sorry, that’s—” 

“I’m going to write it down,” Sana says, nodding firmly as she faces forward again. 

+

Momo spends a week not thinking about that false start of a conversation. 

She keeps her curtains closed. She spends ten extra minutes wandering around school before she heads home, hoping she and Sana don’t sync up on the same route again. It’s a weekend when she’s in her bedroom, headphones in, and her sister comes in to say there’s someone at the door for her. 

Sana is standing on the doorstep, rain boots and an umbrella, hair inexplicably wet anyways. 

Sana asks if she wants to come over, and Momo’s mom gives a nod, and they do not go over to Sana’s house. 

They take their bikes and ride through the canola flower fields. Momo can barely see past the rain in her eyes, Sana’s yellow windbreaker blurring into everything, until they stop in the mud. 

Momo follows, wordless, over a hill and over a fence and then they are in a little enclosure that stinks in the earthly, inoffensive way animals do. 

Ten minutes later they each have a piglet in their arms, tilted against their elbows like infants, and their little black eyes are flicking across the overcast sky. 

“I thought it would break my heart if I didn’t do something about it,” Sana says. Her fingers dance idly over her piglet’s stomach before she presses a kiss to its ear. 

She’s so sincere Momo thinks maybe it would be best to laugh. 

But luckily she doesn’t, and luckily Sana grins, and that night she can barely sleep because she wants to keep telling the story to herself and imprint every detail so firmly that no hours of dreaming can smooth it away. 

+

The expeditions become a weekly thing. 

They start with a blank sheet of notebook paper, two dots at the center: Sana’s house and Momo’s house, respectively. And then the typography of the land around them swirling out with colored pencils and fading ballpoint pens. 

It’s not really accurate. The fields are shrunk, landmarks like oddly shaped rocks or ‘where we saw the ducks’ drawn in cartoon magnifying glasses, stickers sealed down over the prime picnic spots. 

There’s never a plan except to get somewhere they hadn’t before. 

Sana’s mom packs them lunches and sunscreen they never use because it’s greasy and Momo swears it makes her sweat more. They switch having to wear the backpack stuffed with band-aids and lukewarm water bottles and a little pink wind-up radio they set up when they eat their snacks in the shade of a spared tree. 

“I can lift you,” Sana says one afternoon. She’s sitting on the blanket, chewing bubblegum, and Momo is on her tiptoes, arms outstretched, trying to catch a plum on the edges of her fingertips. 

“I’ve almost got it.” Momo bounces up but it doesn’t work. “Just—“

“I _can_.” Sana makes a show of hoisting herself up and wiping her hands off on her shorts. She’s maybe a centimeter taller than Momo, and maybe it would be better if she— 

Sana is behind her, and then her arms are around Momo’s waist in what could be a loose hug. “On three.” Sana’s voice is so close and Momo will not sink back against her. 

“One.”

Sana’s arms tighten around her. 

Momo focuses on the plum. 

“Two.” 

They both take a deep breath. 

“Three.” 

Sana lifts, her head pressed against Momo’s back, and she gets maybe two seconds more of airtime than if she had just hopped, and her hand clenches around the plum and it clicks from the branch and then the world kind of snaps its ankle and Momo hits the ground hard and Sana squeaks and they’re in the grass. Sana sits up, laughing, and Momo is jostled around until she laughs too. Nothing hurts except the heat on her cheeks. The back of her head is cradled against Sana’s chest, her arms rag-doll limp and slung over Sana’s knees. 

They trade the plum back and forth, Momo biting over the imprint of Sana’s teeth, the juice weeping down her chin.

“Is this okay,” Sana murmurs when there’s little more than the stem left, her thumb hovering an inch from Momo’s face. 

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” 

Sana’s lips pull down into a frown. “That isn’t a yes, Momoring.” 

“Well what are you gonna do?” 

Sana rolls her eyes and swipes at the corner of Momo’s mouth with her fingers, then presenting a little shred of plum skin balanced on her thumb. “What did you think I was gonna do?” 

Momo does not like the question. 

+

“Is this okay” becomes a signpost, set up at every new intimacy. 

Sana asks before she tangles her hands in Momo’s hair, before she braids it in loose plaits. 

Sana asks when she’s crouched down, hands poised over Momo’s shoelaces. 

Sana asks mid-hug, and Momo is glad she’s settled on always saying a simple ‘yes’ because then Sana’s hands soothe down her back.

In a way, Momo hates it. She’s seen Sana lace hands with other girls at school, even press stray kisses to their cheeks and knuckles. But, with her, Sana is so gentle Momo thinks she’ll bruise. 

It’s one of the side effects of being friends with someone. Their impression of you starts to form— a shadow, too long in the legs and broad in the shoulders— and Momo starts to wonder if she really is as timid as Sana seems to think she is, as delicate. Or if she’s deserving of it. 

But Sana’s eyes glow when she asks, her voice barely over a whisper. It’s like the weight of a dragonfly that’s landed on Momo’s wrist. It’s so small. It’s so meaningless. But it could fly away. 

+

One weekend Sana decides that they’re going to follow the shallow aqueducts that line the rice fields until they find a river. They start on their bikes, but eventually the road crumbles into nothing more than spare asphalt and potholes filled with wildflowers, and they leave their bicycles under a tree.

Momo fits her steps in Sana’s shoe-prints. She’s wearing her sister’s hand-me-down tennis shoes and they don’t fit right, and Sana glances over her shoulder every few minutes to ask if they need to be double-knotted. 

“Double knots aren’t cool.” 

Sana laughs. “Who said that?” 

Momo doesn’t have an answer. She hunches under the weight of the backpack. 

Soon enough the fields and fences falter against the line of trees. All along beside them the water runs in its concrete trough, clear and fresh. 

At some point it gets louder. 

At some point they find the river. There are smooth stones along the bottom. It doesn’t come higher than the ant bites on their calves, but they set up the wind-up radio anyways and tune it to the 80’s station. 

Momo kicks her shoes away, strips off her socks, and rests her feet at the edge of the water. She rifles through the backpack for snacks while Sana combs through the river for stones. She stacks them along the shore, balancing them in a tower. 

It’ll be a new landmark to draw on their map. 

They’ve made other ones. Sana has written their names on trees and laid canola flowers under telephone poles. They found a dead pheasant once and dug into the earth with their hands and swaddled the bird with a napkin. Momo made a little cross with two crooked branches and a hair-tie to mark the grave, and maybe that was sacrilegious, maybe something terrible would happen to them now, but— 

“Is this okay?” 

Momo looks up, refocuses her eyes, blurry as if she’s been sleeping. Sana’s hands are gripping the bottom of her own t-shirt, shoulders raised. She always stops herself just half-way. 

_Why wouldn’t it be?_

“Sure,” Momo says. 

Sana’s shirt collar gets stuck around her ears for a second and Momo laughs even as she looks— Sana’s yellow bra, her torso a shade or two lighter than her arms. 

Momo’s never thought about all the places she hasn’t touched. But here it is— a new blank piece of paper. It makes her throat feel warm and thick, like she’s drinking coffee. 

“You’re so mean,” Sana whines when she’s freed herself, balling up her t-shirt and tossing it at Momo. It lands limply in the water and Momo fishes it out, laying it on one of the sun-struck stones before she pulls her own shirt off. 

They end up laying side-by-side, floating in the cool water. Goosebumps speckle up Momo’s arms and Sana traces them like braille. 

“We should come back here someday.”

“That’s against the rules.” 

Momo huffs. “I mean one day we will run out of new places to go and then—“ 

Sana’s thumb moves over Momo’s knuckles, chiding. “Please don’t be realistic.” 

+

The walk home is a little miserable. 

The sun is setting and it’s hard to ride a bike while holding a flashlight and Momo’s running shorts are soaked through and she wants nothing more than to take a shower and brush through the knots in her hair and cocoon up in her duvet but also she wants to come home and find that no one is there, that the world is empty except for them and that in the morning they will set out across the entire prefecture. They will find every river here, and then every river in Japan, and take a rowboat to the rest of the earth and have notebooks of atlases drawn half in Sana’s hand and half in Momo’s. 

+

For her birthday Momo asks for a Polaroid camera. 

Every flat surface in her bedroom is lined with the overturned photos, the flash going off as Sana poses on the bed in a feathery boa they dug out of Hana’s closet, a peace sign pressed against her cheek. 

“I was thinking,” Momo says, eye squinting into the viewfinder, “we could add pictures to our map.” 

“Of us?” 

“Mhmm.”

“Then we should practice.” 

It’s easiest if they’re laying down, Sana holding the camera above them, her hand clenched around it awkwardly so she can hit the shutter with the tip of her thumb. 

+

Winter comes with its snow and the expeditions screech to a halt because the roads are too slick with ice. 

Momo finds herself having certain fantasies. 

Like she wants there to be a blizzard, and she wants everyone to be stuck in their houses and the snow to come all the way up past her two-story window, and she wants to make a tunnel between her window and Sana’s. They could line it with candles and the ice would sweat along the walls and they’d sit in their mittens and rubber boots with permanently red cheeks. 

She wants there to be some disaster and like in all the movies that play in the living room after her parents have fallen asleep— two people do everything to find each other. 

But usually those people are not friends. 

Usually they don’t live a block away. 

“I miss you,” Sana whines into the phone. They haven’t seen each other in two days. 

“Oh.” 

“ _Momo!_ ” 

“Okay! I miss you too!” It’s so dark out that Momo can only see her own reflection, the lamp beside her bed, in the window. “It doesn’t sound as nice when I say it.” 

“I’ll be the judge of that! It made me feel good. I liked it.” 

Something in Momo’s chest goes all gooey and her next breath comes out too quick. 

“I like it,” Sana repeats into the digital silence. 

“Do you think we’ll be friends next year?” 

“Um.” Momo can envision Sana’s eyebrows scrunching together. “As in, literally? Like next month?” 

“I just mean. We won’t be able to hang out with this weather, and—“ Momo rolls over in bed, facing her closed bedroom door. “A few years ago I had these friends but I got sick for a few days and when I came back we didn’t sit together at lunch anymore so—“ 

“That’s terrible and also not going to happen.” Sana sounds like she’s trying not to laugh and Momo blisters. “And you could still come over.” 

“Okay.” Momo tugs the bedsheets. “That’s good. That made me feel good.” 

She hangs up somewhere in the mess of Sana’s squeals. 

+

December and all its landmarks pass. Momo spends most Saturdays in Sana’s bedroom. She has her own computer and they share the desk chair, hips crammed together until Sana decides it would be easier for Momo to sit on her lap— _”if that’s okay?”_ — and draw nonsense on MS Paint. 

Momo pushes her curfews later and later. She hates putting her shoes back on even when Sana offers to tie them. She hates the two minute walk through the frigid air and then being in her own house, her quiet Sana-less bedroom. She’s started to hate when her dad ruffles her hair when he passes by, hate when Hana steals the puffy coat she got for Christmas. No one ever asks. No one is as gentle with her as Sana is. 

+

In the spring Sana tapes three new pieces of paper to the corners of their map. 

The rice fields are different now— the still water like glass laid against the hills, and the world seems as blue on the bottom as it is on the top. 

Momo has another one of those gnawing fantasies as they’re pedaling along the road, Sana just ahead of her— that their wings are about to unfurl from their shoulders and they’ll fly up. 

Momo decides that when they go back to the river she’ll kiss Sana. 

She plots it out in her head. She’ll brush her teeth twice that morning and swirl Listerine over her tongue. It will be before they take their shirts off to swim because she doesn’t want it to seem like anything— well, not like that. She wants it to be when she’s still in the safety of one of Hana’s old jerseys, and Sana is busy with checking on the monument she made months ago, and they have just tuned the radio to the right station. 

Momo will ask ‘is this okay’ and when Sana rolls her eyes, when her pupils are at the highest point in that arc, Momo will put her own smile over Sana’s. 

It’s a few weeks later that they find the Old Place. 

+

A series of wrong turns and reckless bets get them lost in the woods. 

The sky is too overcast for any sun-based navigation. Every ten seconds a new mosquito pinches Momo’s neck. She’s sweaty and frustrated and her voice has a new edge when she shouts “no, we came from back there.” 

Sana doesn’t turn, high-stepping through the underbrush, the backpack bouncing with each step. “Have I ever led you astray?” 

Momo has to jog to catch up with her because Sana’s half right. Momo has never been somewhere she doesn’t want to be as long as she’s been with Sana. 

This might come close though, when twenty minutes later Sana abruptly stops, turns on her heel and mutters, “Okay, maybe not this way.” 

“Maybe I should call my mom?” 

Sana stretches around to open the backpack, unfolding the map and frowning. “Okay, so I think we’re past here.” She points at a crude drawing of an abandoned well they had found a few hours ago. “But I don’t think our parents would know where that is.” 

Momo’s head thumps back against a tree trunk. Damn them for never caring what was real but only what it felt like. Damn her for following Sana no matter what. Damn the wolves she hears howling at night. 

Distantly, thunder snarls. 

Sana worries her bottom lip between her teeth. 

“It’s okay,” Momo decides. 

“It’s okay?”

“It’s okay.” 

+

They find a circle of pine trunks. 

They find a trough spilling over, goldfish as red as foxes swimming in the algae-clouded water. 

“We must be close to something,” Sana says, holding her windbreaker over her head. 

Momo tucks against her shoulder, trying to stay as dry as she can as the rain sweeps down. “Is this okay,” she dares with a teasing bump. 

Sana rolls her eyes indulgently. 

+

The Old Place was maybe a house, maybe a shed. It’s hard to tell without walls. Momo assumes it burned. Only the tin roof is still there, shining above the black rubble. 

The rain is loud, like a hail of bullets above them, but it’s dry and they eat their lunches. 

“This could go on all day.” 

Sana shrugs, propping her chin on her knees, hugging her legs as she stares out at the woods. “Are you restless?” 

“No.” Momo fiddles with her shoelaces, thumbs at a few stray hairs near her ankle that she missed when she shaved her legs that morning. There’s something about this silence— this silence that is strictly between them while the sky rails against the earth. She’s been alone with Sana plenty, but not alone and quiet. Usually there’s something to bicker about, something to point out, something to laugh at. But right now she feels barely there at all, the profile of Sana’s face like a distant planet against the black-barked trees around them. It reminds her of— 

“I used to see you. On the roof.” 

Sana makes a small noise that doesn’t lift from her throat to her mouth. It’s not exactly disinterest, but it’s not curiosity either. Just compulsory acknowledgment. 

“Do you like the stars?”

“I’m looking for UFOs.” 

Momo’s smile cracks like a soda can, laugh fizzing up from her stomach. “You believe in that?” 

“Not yet,” Sana says seriously. “But I believe in magic.” 

Grey sheets of rain slat past the leaves. 

Here’s the fantasy: it never stops. The earth floods and they climb up on the roof, float over the new sea while sharks swirl in cyclones around them. But they never slip off. They never make a big symbolic sacrifice. They hold hands when the sun comes back. 

Here’s another: it never stops. Everything beyond the woods disappears and they sharpen twigs and use the loose strings of their jeans to make rabbit traps and rebuild the Old Place until it's theirs. 

Here’s the worst one: it never stops. Nothing— not time, not growing pains, not distance— unknits them. They miss each other every two days like clockwork. They go to college and get a series of haircuts until they settle on something they like and Momo never has to walk home alone. 

“I’m in a bit of a mood,” Sana sighs. Her eyes flick to Momo, assessing. 

Sometimes Momo thinks of their friendship like a scale— a beating heart on one side, a feather on the other. They balance toward whoever needs lightness. 

“Do you. Y’know. Wanna talk about it?” 

Sana’s head falls to her shoulder, her eyelashes fluttering over Momo’s neck as she nuzzles in closer. 

“Was it—” Dread curls in Momo’s stomach like a stormcloud. “Did I do something?” 

“No. Just my dumb head.” 

Momo presses her cheek to Sana’s wet hair. She hopes it reads as affectionate. It’s never come as easily to her as it does to Sana— to know where to touch, and when, and if asking is necessary. 

Like what Sana is doing right now, running her fingertip over the back of Momo’s own finger, from cuticle to knuckle, again and again. It should be numbing— the repetitiveness, the gentleness— but every nerve in Momo’s body is like the magnets embedded in a railway, lighting up and pulling along this same path. 

“I’ve always hoped I have pretty hands,” Momo says. It’s as absent, as thoughtless and quiet as a breath. 

Feathers swirl in the aviary of Momo’s chest when Sana turns her hands over, brushes her thumbs down the three ticklish lines of her palm and settles for brushing against her wrist. It’s where her veins are the most blue, between the twin indents of her tendons, oddly sensitive. But maybe just because it’s Sana. Because it’s Sana. 

Sana who is mapping the tributaries of her arm, following up to the delta just below her elbow. It shouldn’t be significant. Momo thought this too after she saw Sana without her shirt at the river— their bodies are almost identical. Approximately the same height. Both skinny. Both girls. And yet Sana’s hands wander further and Momo’s eyes search her own skin. 

“Do you like this?” 

It’s so much worse than ‘is this okay?’ Not neutral. Not permission. A heavier ‘yes’ or a heavier ‘no.’ 

“Yeah. Feels good.” 

Sana hums. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” 

A weak smile pulls at the corner of Sana’s mouth. “How good you feel? Yes. Let’s talk about that.” 

“ _Sana._ ”

“Yeah, yeah.” She draws a circle over Momo’s pulse point. “But one day we should, right?” 

“One day,” Momo agrees. “And we should go back to the river.” 

She can feel Sana’s shoulders tense, but when she speaks her voice is even lighter than before. “What is with you and the river?” 

Sana had touched her hand there too. 

“I wanna take pictures.” 

“I’ll wear a bikini next time.” 

The spell breaks, loud and final like a beer bottle on concrete. Momo leans into Sana hard enough it might be a shove, not seeking for closeness, and Sana’s hands raise to cover her mouth as she laughs and laughs. 

+

It’s spring so the rice fields are swimming with ducklings and dragonfly nymphs. It’s the time before everything grows up. 

Momo takes pictures of Sana doing everything: Sana with radioactively pink popsicle juice dripping down her chin as she smiles with all her teeth. Sana laid out like a lioness in the branches of a plum tree, pensive as the sun sets. Sana in one of Momo’s dark green fisherman sweaters, sleeves too long. 

And then Sana decides it’s her turn. 

It makes Momo nervous, looking at Sana with the camera obscuring more than half her face, never sure when the click and flash will come. 

Worse, Sana is not a great photographer. She disregards what might be better angles. A majority of the pictures are unflattering— Momo’s eyes half closed, mouth wide because she’s mid-sentence, hair spun up in a nest of knots. 

“Is this what I look like,” Momo whines as the color bleeds across the empty blackness of this latest monstrosity. It’s unequivocally ugly, taken from below and Momo hates the way her chin looks, and there’s a pimple in the crease between her nose and her cheek that’s even brighter with the flash and— 

“Mhmm.” Sana smiles proudly. She uncaps a Sharpie and writes out ‘Momoring’ with a smattering of hearts. 

Against all logic, it’s nice. That night Momo lays alone in the dark, stroking her wrist, thinking of every little miracle and how she hasn’t thanked Sana for any of them. 

+

It’s a Friday evening, just after dinner, and Momo is drawing shapes on Sana’s leg with a Mr. Sketch cherry marker. Circles, not hearts, around the mosquito bites on her knees. 

“Momo?” 

She can’t see Sana’s face because she has a fluffy pillow hugged to her chest. 

“Is this—“ 

“I love you.” 

There are two chemicals bleeding over undeveloped film. Pain and adrenaline. 

Sana could mean I love you. This is enough. 

Sana could mean I love you. I want everything. 

Momo draws another circle just to test the steadiness of her hands.

They end up like this— Momo’s head on Sana’s chest. Their legs fit together over the covers, knee to knee. The computer hums in the corner. The camera rests like a cyclops eye on the bedside table. 

“Tomorrow we should go to the river.” 

Sana taps the tip of her nose. 

+

Sometimes Momo likes to think about what it looks like from above; the whole green sea, a school of crane shadows swimming through the summer grass, each wave never passing its manicured shore. The shading of green in the short sweeps of a colored pencil. The aqueducts lines of a ballpoint pen. 

But there are still other things.

Like any map, it only shows what's there. Not what’s about to happen. Not the freshness of Momo’s breath that she tests with a humid puff against her cupped palm. Not the knots of the bikini top poking up over Sana’s collar. Not the trail of shoe-prints through the field— Momo placing her double-knotted steps exactly over Sana’s. Not the thin river. Not them standing in the shallows, kissing like hemispheres.

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday clem!!!! i hope your day is filled with laughter and love<3


End file.
